Astronomers have unveiled an extraordinary infrared map of the Milky Way, offering the most detailed glimpse to date of our galaxy. This groundbreaking achievement, boasting over 1.5 billion objects, was made possible by the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) VISTA telescope in Chile. The project, which spanned an impressive 13 years, resulted in the collection of a staggering 500 terabytes of data—the largest survey ever conducted with an ESO telescope.
Helmed by astrophysicist Dante Minniti, the team employed VISTA’s infrared camera, VIRCAM, to penetrate the dense dust and gas shrouding the galaxy’s core, exposing previously unseen regions. The dataset, composed of 200,000 images, covers an area of the sky equivalent to 8600 full moons and features ten times more objects than a similar survey conducted in 2012. Among the myriad of celestial attractions revealed are newborn stars nestled in dusty clouds, globular clusters, brown dwarfs, and even free-floating planets.
While the dataset’s sheer size precludes its release as a single image, the processed data and object catalogues are available for exploration via the ESO Science Portal. The team’s efforts also included tracking fast-moving hypervelocity stars and mapping objects that periodically vary in brightness, culminating in a highly accurate 3D representation of the Milky Way’s inner regions. This unprecedented data collection forms part of the VVV and VVVX surveys, which have already spurred the publication of over 300 scientific papers. With anticipated upgrades to the VISTA and Very Large Telescope (VLT), astronomers are eager to unlock even more secrets hidden within the millions of objects surveyed.
